I read the article on New Jerusalem, and I was wondering how you would explain Revelation 21:2 where it says that the holy city, New Jerusalem, would be coming down out of heaven. Thanks.
The person pondering “New Jerusalem coming down from Heaven” refers to a previous Question & Answer in the February 2017 edition of Gospel Gazette Online (https://www.gospelgazette.com/gazette/2017/feb/page14.html#article2). Aside from repeating information contained in the previous article, we turn specifically to providing an explanation for the phrase, “…New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…” (Revelation 21:2 NKJV).
Last month, I contrasted the earthly home of literal Jerusalem with the heavenly home to come, figuratively a spiritual Jerusalem. Earthly Jerusalem, a place of bodily habitation, will be replaced with a figurative or spiritual Jerusalem, a place of habitation for spirits.
“…New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…” doubly identifies the origin of this eternal abode of righteous souls—“out of heaven”—“from God.” As such, the phrase also confirms the spiritual nature of the New Jerusalem, since “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God [Heaven]” (1 Corinthians 15:50) and “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24). Hence, the “New Jerusalem” is figurative or spiritual and not a literal city in which humans in their physical bodies will abide on a physical earth, which will be utterly destroyed—even to the eradicating of the smallest building blocks of creation (2 Peter 3:10-11).
